Scale Wendell Hostetler 30% Piper Cherokee Glass Fuselage Build.

Working on the servo pockets and hatches. The wing is rather thick so decided to mount the servos upright, or downright since they on the bottom of the wing. Pinned a fence to the wing made from scrap balsa. Using the router attachment cut .025" deep groove around the servo pocket, short pieces of 1/4" dowel hard points were added for the screws. After the glue cured the area was cleaned up with router attachment before cutting the pocket. I zip bit was used to cut the pocket and the 1/8" servo plate was installed with Gorilla glue. The hatch material was laid up on the recently constructed mold.
Mounting the engine today.

TonyHallo said:

Working on the servo pockets and hatches. The wing is rather thick so decided to mount the servos upright, or downright since they on the bottom of the wing. Pinned a fence to the wing made from scrap balsa. Using the router attachment cut .025" deep groove around the servo pocket, short pieces of 1/4" dowel hard points were added for the screws. After the glue cured the area was cleaned up with router attachment before cutting the pocket. I zip bit was used to cut the pocket and the 1/8" servo plate was installed with Gorilla glue. The hatch material was laid up on the recently constructed mold.
Mounting the engine today.


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I like the way you did that with a router just have to remember the process when I need a servo mounted in a wing. Nice clean installation.

Thank you Snoopy.
Bungeed the Cherokee carrier to a step ladder and then bungeed the fuselage onto the carrier to hold the fuselage vertical while the position of the engine was adjusted. Didn't source the spinner yet so a 3 1/2" plywood disc was use to align the engine. Once happy, the firewall side of the standoffs were hot glued into position. The standoffs were drilled and tapped on the engine side only, the standoffs are drilled with a #21 drill for threading the firewall side to 10-32 once the final length is determined. After the glue cooled the engine bolts were removed one at a time and a long 1/8" drill bit with a 2" piece of 5/32" tube was used to locate the holes on the firewall. The 5/32" tube is just slightly smaller than the minor diameter of the 10-32 tapped hole. While the cowl was on measure the gap and decided to remove .050" from the standoffs. The engine was removed and final machining and tapping was completed on the standoffs. Another task that I don't care for is out of the way.

A little control linkage work, used 1/16" G10 for the horns.

Taking a plane to auction on Saturday that had a little mishap during landing, hit an area on the runway that the skunks were working on, the left wheel hit the rolled up grass and flipped the plane over breaking the canopy. I'm not interested in repairing the plane because I'd rather work on the Cherokee but decided that a replacement canopy would probably bring more value since this a one off build. Used plans drawn in the 90's by Frank Knoll and modified for things like canisters. While I had the vacuum former set up decided to pull the windows for the Cherokee. It takes over an hour to set the oven and vacuum table up so it made sense.
The windshield was pulled with .060" thick PETG because off the deep draw. The thickness at the top was reduced to .020" after pulling. The thickness at the front of the windshield was .040" after pulling. The side windows were pulled with .040" PETG. Let the .040" PETG sag a little too far and formed the wrinkles in the front but thankfully it is in an area not needed, should cut that area off the plug anyway.

Bought this seat from I Fly Tallies when I was building the Champ, decided it wasn't the right fit. Put it on the shelf. The seat looks like it belongs in a private jet.


Found this photo of a 1966 Cherokee.



Decided to see if I could make the seat work for the Cherokee. Sawed the bottom off and finished with Bondo, the seat was 3d printed and seems heavy to me. I plan to mold it so that it can be used for the back seat as well. The front seats are free standing while the back seats rest on panels and not required to be as thick. Plan to make the seats filled with foam like the rudder, thinking a layer of 1 1/2 ounce and 4 ounce cloth then the foam filler





Have the wings just about ready to begin finishing. Thinking I might just take the wings and stabilator through the whit paint then focus on the fuselage. Visited the local auto body supply, they think they can mix the paint to the color code in acrylic enamel which would be wonderful.

After the auction this morning came home and blocked the wings with 220 and put the second layer of 3/4 ounce cloth on. Tried something different, spread the cloth out on the wing, painted there lines of epoxy 1" wide down the span, then used a credit card to squeegee out the excess. More work than the thinned method but I think the results are better. Covered the G10 material as well. Tomorrow will do the other side.

Agree with you I also prefer spreading it out with a credit card. I need to put a little dye in the epoxy it gives me more insight on the thickness of the epoxy. Also I find I can only do the credit card method with WestSystem.

I'm using US Composites 635 thin epoxy, it's about $100 for a gallon and hardener, you have three choices, fast hardener is a 4 to 1 mix and 4 hour cure, medium is 3 to 1 with 10 hour cure, and slow is 2 to 1 with 24+ hours cure. It was recommended by several people that are professionals in composites. I think I'm into 4 gallons in on this project, should have bought a 5 gallon pale. Used more epoxy in the last year than the previous 20 years, think I bought the first gallon of West Systems in 2002, maybe two more until 2024.
Just squeegeeing until the cloth looks almost dry, no sheene. With the thin epoxy, it's very easy. Using more fillers after switching over to the thin.

Had purchased a RB 25 redundancy bus for the Cherokee, it would everything that I wanted, triple receivers and dual voltage input. After doing a little research discovered that the fail safe is set in the redundancy buss and not in the receivers. Makes sense, however the buss is set with the failsafe set at 868 us and can only be changed with ETHOS. Since I still on OpenTX needed another solution, decided on a RB 30+, has more options and does more than I wanted but it will work with OpenTX, cost about $100 more as well! Ordered it without the non contact switch but it came the switch any way, plan use a remote fab.